tection and its banner. So she could not understand the
touch that came to her from afar and yet how intimately,
the whisper so aloof and yet so thrillingly personal. The
standard of either language or experience was not hers;
she could listen but not think, she could feel but not
know, her eyes looked forward and did not see, her hands
groped in the sunlight and felt nothing. It was like the
edge of a little wind which stirred her tresses but could
not lift them, or the first white peep of the dawn which
is neither light nor darkness. But she listened, not with
her ears but with her blood. The fingers of her soul
stretched out to clasp a stranger's hand, and her dis-
quietude was quickened through with an eagerness which
was neither physical nor mental, for neither her body
nor her mind was definitely interested. Some dim re-
gion between these grew alarmed and watched and
waited and did not sleep or grow weary at all.

One morning she lay among the long, warm grasses.
She watched a bird who soared and sang for a little time,
and then it sped swiftly away down the steep air and out
of sight in the blue distance. Even when it was gone the
song seemed to ring in her ears. It seemed to linger with
her as a faint, sweet echo, coming fitfully, with little
pauses as though a wind disturbed it, and careless, dis-
tant eddies. After a few moments she knew it was not
a bird. No bird's song had that consecutive melody, for
their themes are as careless as their wings. She sat up
and looked about her, but there was nothing in sight:
the mountains sloped gently above her and away to the